One of the simple pleasures in life is standing barefoot on freshly mown grass, a pleasure that doubles on a warm summer evening when, with hose in hand, I chat with the neighbors while sprinkling the lawn.

And because this gives me joy, the state of California wants to fine me $500 a day.

I’ve been water-boarded.

In response to our historic drought, the State Water Resources Control Board has prohibited the following activities: overwatering lawns to the point of creating runoff, washing a car with a garden hose not fitted with a shutoff nozzle, hosing down driveways and sidewalks, and using drinking water for ornamental fountains that don’t re-circulate.

Frankly, these restrictions aren’t that onerous since I don’t have an ornamental fountain re-circulating or otherwise and the wife does most of the car washing around our place so she’ll get fined, not me.

And as a matter of principle I never water to the point of causing runoff because I hate runoffs. The last runoff in L.A. produced Eric Garcetti as mayor.

That leaves hosing down the driveway as my only egregious hydro-crime.

The American dream of home ownership exploded in SoCal after World War II as millions of returning servicemen ditched their rifles for surfboards. But while they may have left their snow shovels behind, they did pack an odd East Coast notion that’s as out of place in L.A. as a tractor would be in Times Square.

Every Christmas, Southern Californians decorate their homes in faux Currier & Ives winterscapes, pretending Glendale is Westport, Conn., and every summer we expect a lush, green lawn to bloom in the desert, as if Woodland Hills is Lexington, Ky.

Living in the San Fernando Valley is like living in a brick kiln eight months out of the year. It takes real eco-chutzpah to plant grass in the Valley.

So the wife and I decided to murder our lawn. And I’m getting paid to do it.

I’m a lawn hit man.

Killing my lawn will not only result in a smaller Department of Water and Power bill, but thanks to the DWP’s California Friendly Landscape Incentive Program, they’ll actually pay $3 a square foot for replacing my lawn with drought resistant plants.

I’d let my mother die of thirst to get a check out of the DWP.

This will be simple, I thought, since it wasn’t much of a lawn to begin with; mostly weeds, clover and a forest of sprouting palm seeds that are murder to yank. But nature is funny: When I wanted a green lawn it kept dying; now that I wanted it dead, it flourished.

Then Fritz said things were going to heat up, a full week of triple-digit temps. Our yard was drier than an AA meeting.

Big mistake.

In order to collect the three bucks a square yard from the DWP, there are hoops one must jump through.

After visiting the DWP Cash in your Lawn website (www.LADWP.com/CF) I discovered I was a dyslexic grass killer, having failed to fill out my online application and submit “before” photos of my “healthy turf” for approval prior to slaughtering my lawn.

So I’m now running up an enormous DWP tab flooding my yard in a desperate attempt to bring it back to life only so I can kill it for cash later.

Slowly, blade by blade, my lawn is crawling out of the grave.

Frankenlawn!

Of course, 90 percent of California’s water goes to agriculture and industry, with only 53 percent of the remaining 10 percent used by homeowners for landscaping. The average California household literally flushes 20 percent of their water down the crapper, with another 18 percent lost to leaky pipes.

Frankly, selling our lawns for $3 buck a foot really won’t make much of a dent in the drought but maybe all our ugly dead lawns might finally get the California Water Resources Control Board to build new reservoirs as a hedge against future droughts, something we’ve failed to do over the past 40 years.

The population of California is projected to hit 50 million by the end of the century. If you think gas and double lattes are expensive today, wait until our DWP bills arrive by postal forklift in the future.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sunday and Wednesday. He can be reached at: Doug@KABC.com.

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